Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Swayze Summer Round II: The Outsiders

Last week's inaugural Swayze Summer film screening was a hit! At the Source's showing of Point Break we had hawaiian shirts, ratty blond wigs, Widmer beer and a whole lot of hooting and hollering during the sky diving scene (the first one). FREE entry got attendees a FREE raffle ticket and some lucky Swayze-lovers went home with prizes like swag from Crow's Feet Commons and SHARC passes.

Ready for Swayze round II? We're showing The Outsiders, Wednesday July 31, 8 pm at the Old Stone Church.

After the rumble...

Here's what editor Phil Busse (who presented a Swayze retrospective prior to Point Break) had to say about the classic coming of age flick.

Like Harry Potter has been for the Millennials, The Outsiders was a book that had captured the imagination for the ascent Generation X. With themes of alienation, and teenagers shedding their parents’ socio-economic biases and looking past stereotypes, it was a precursor for every John Hughes film and captured the mood for a new era.

But what makes The Outsiders, the movie, such a watershed moment is the casting. Sheen’s oldest son, Emilio Estevez, was pulled in as a Mickey Mouse t-shirt wearing, sugar-crazed goofball, and an unknown Ralph Machio plays a tender lost boy who can’t but help attract trouble, a role that bounced him to the career-defining character as “The Karate Kid.”

In fact, none of the actors in The Outsiders were established yet, but the film served as a starting point for cinema in the ‘80s—and beyond. It introduced Matt Dillon and Rob Lowe to stardom, and also cemented Tom Cruise as an “It” actor.

Swayze was the only other actor with a semi-established career, but it was his role as the older authority figure in The Outsiders that plucked him from a mundane career and landed in the celebrity jet stream and as a peripheral member of the Brat Pack.